3/17/2009 @ 3:45PM

Gazillions Of Gamers?

Los Angeles – Massive multiplayer videogames like
Activision
‘s “World of Warcraft” thrive thanks to legions of obsessed young men willing to devote hefty monthly fees and endless hours to honing their monster-slaying skills. Gazillion Entertainment, a Silicon Valley start-up unveiled Tuesday, thinks it can inspire such devotion in a much broader group of gamers.

Armed with a pile of venture capital and staffed with veterans of top games shops such as
Electronic Arts
and
THQ
, Gazillion will create online worlds to appeal to men, women and children of all ages, says Rob Hutter, the former venture capitalist recruited to run Gazillion. The company, which has been operating under the radar since last year as NR2B Research, has plans to create massive multiplayer online (MMO) games played on Web browsers, consoles and packaged software platforms.

Central to the nascent firm’s plans are building MMOs based on existing entertainment content. Gazillion is currently building two games for
Marvel Entertainment
, the Hollywood studio and comic book publisher behind Spider Man, Iron Man and Hulk.

Next year, Gazillion and Marvel will release a casual MMO game for children, to be played on Web browsers. The two companies are also developing Marvel Universe, a vastly more ambitious MMO aimed at adults. Marvel and Gazillion haven’t specified the exact date the game will be available but said it will be no later than 2012.

Marvel, which also licenses its content to Activision
and THQ for console games, sees the Gazillion collaboration as a tool for creating stronger connections between fans and the comic and film studio’s superheroes. “With an MMO, you can live the stories of 70 years of Marvel comics or become a participatory storyteller in new adventures,” says Simon Philips, Marvel’s president of worldwide consumer products.

Hutter sees a huge opportunity for MMOs appealing to people outside the “hardcore gamer” demographic. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates online gaming revenues will grow from $8 billion in 2008 to $14 billion in 2012.

Hutter says the massive success World of Warcraft, a game in which players assume the identities of elves, gnomes, trolls and the like to battle competing players, inspired him to look at the economics of MMOs. Released in 2004 by Blizzard, and now a division of Activision, the game has 11 million subscribers and generates $1.1 billion in annual revenue.

While most people unaccustomed to MMOs might be intimidated by complex games like “Warcraft,” Hutter says trends in technology suggest the audience for simple, well-designed games will grow quickly. The runaway success of Nintendo‘s
Wii proved virgin gamers will try new titles if they are easy to play, while the boom in social networks like Facebook suggests people of all ages are looking for new ways to interact online, he says.

Breaking into the MMO world is a risky gambit for Gazillion and its venture capital investors, which include Revolution Ventures, Oak Investment Partners and Allen & Co. MMO games are hugely expensive to develop. During an investor conference last year, Activision Chief Executive
Robert
Kotick
Robert Kotick
said any game trying to compete with “World of Warcraft” would require of an investment of at least $500 million.

Beyond that, Gazillion is late to the game. DC Comics, Warner Brothers and
Sony
have teamed up to launch DC Universe, another comics-based MMO, later this year. Another company, Cryptic Studios, is planning to roll out its Champions Online as well.

Gazillion hasn’t specified how much venture financing it has in the bank. The company has hired some 300 employees, the majority of which toil as game developers for four studios operating within the firm.

Because of the association with the top-flight Hollywood studio, MMO gamers will have high expectations for Marvel Universe, says Matt Chandranait, a longtime videogame journalist and host of the “Co-Op” Web video show on Revision3.com.

“If they launch a product that is riddled with bugs,” Chandronait says, “word will spread like wildfire on the Internet and kill the game’s future prospects.”